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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382464">so clear and so near</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction'>stiction</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(plural) - Freeform, Arcee is Bad at Feelings, Canon-Typical Violence, Continuity What Continuity, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Not Actually Unrequited Love, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, Trans Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 16:40:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,189</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/stiction/pseuds/stiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hot Rod was still young. She’d seen things just as horrible as Arcee had, only far less of them. She probably hadn’t learned that anything hopeful and uncomplicated would invariably end up strapped to a conveyer belt, condemned to the closest smelting pool. </p><p>Arcee kicked the bunk again, hard enough that something in her foot snapped. </p><p>There was no place here for something soft.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Arcee/Hot Rod</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>so clear and so near</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/harperuth/gifts">harperuth</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>happy birthday to the illustrious harper! at long last, a work in progress dedicated to you has become unredacted. shoutout to one james autothots for hyping me up and reading the first draft of the rest of my life</p><p>the ship playlist: <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0f6LM1uGFqrEr1U6MS4xmR">don't think it over</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Arcee’s copy of the battle plan was glitching. It ran fine up to a certain point, all the little holograms of their team moving to the designated choke points before the whole setup glitched and reset back to the start. She knew it backwards anyway. It was a Kup classic, complete with suppressive fire, the breaking down of several doors, and at least one instance of a disguise. The only thing that really changed was the position of the players, and even that had a tendency to repeat. </p><p>Take this decaorn. </p><p>Kup would be leading the point team. She was lucky enough to be running second with him. At least then she wouldn’t have to sit around for much longer than it took Kup to get annoyed with one of the new bots trying to hack the lock and decide to just blast the door off its track. And covering them… </p><p>“Hot Rod’ll be up here,” Kup drawled, tapping the holo map. “He’s gonna be providin’ cover and…” He trailed off. </p><p>Arcee glanced up from carving some new graffiti into the table. Kup looked slightly more confused than normal. </p><p>Across the table from her, Hot Rod had a hand in the air. </p><p>“Is there a problem, Hot Rod?” Kup asked. </p><p>“It’s she now,” Hot Rod said. </p><p>Helms rose around the table as the room’s attention came back to the briefing. </p><p>“<em>What’s</em> she?” Kup asked. </p><p>“Me. I am.”</p><p>Arcee joined the team in openly staring at Hot Rod, not out of shock but a sudden, keen curiosity. She took in the posture--stiff enough to make Ultra Magnus proud--before she realized that she’d seen that expression on Hot Rod’s face before. Most notably, she’d seen it last week when they were pinned down in a collapsing warehouse, low on ammunition, all of them leaking energon from a handful of semi-grievous wounds. <em>That</em> was Hot Rod’s ‘nobody-needs-to-know-I’m-scared-strutless’ face. </p><p>“So yeah,” Hot Rod continued, either oblivious to the sudden attention or deliberately ignoring it. Arcee respected both options. “Call me she from now on.”</p><p>As Arcee stared, Hot Rod glanced to her, looked away, and then met her gaze with a look of steady defiance. Arcee tipped her head in acknowledgment and the hard look around Hot Rod’s optics eased. </p><p>“Okay,” Kup said slowly. “But you don’t have to raise your hand. This ain’t academy and none of you are sparklings, even if you sometimes act like ‘em.”</p><p>It was the work of a nanosecond for Arcee to change Hot Rod’s personnel tags. She’d done it as soon as her processor had caught up. Judging by the wave of brief blank looks around the table, the rest of the team had as well. </p><p>“Anyway,” Kup went on, pointing at the holo map with his cygar. “Hot Rod’s gonna be posted up here, and she’ll be providing cover for the mechs on point.”</p><p>Arcee went back to pretending to listen. Since she’d already decided what parts of the plan she was actually going to follow, she snuck another glance at Hot Rod. </p><p>Hot Rod had relaxed again, shoulders rolling back into her usual slump. </p><p>And again, her optics slid back to meet Arcee’s. There was a little smile playing around her mouth. </p><p>Interesting. </p>
<hr/><p>About a quartex ago, Arcee had started seeing much more of Hot Rod than she had before. </p><p>She’d been <em>aware</em> of Hot Rod before that, sure--even if mechs who joined their squad tended to end up offlined or shipped somewhere else when they couldn’t hack it, building rapport was important. Arcee’s brand of rapport was just more hands off than most. More of an ‘ <em> adapt or die </em>’ approach. There was no sense making friends until she was reasonably sure they weren’t an idiot, and even then. There was no guarantee they’d be sticking around.</p><p>When Hot Rod had joined up, Arcee had confidently tagged her as an idiot. </p><p>It wasn’t as insulting as it sounded. Arcee just had high standards for common sense, even if she chose to ignore her own when it was inconvenient. </p><p>And Hot Rod didn’t seem to have an iota of common sense <em>to</em> ignore. </p><p>She’d seen Hot Rod rush headlong into a firefight with no escape plan more times than she cared to count. And yes, sure, she managed to escape intact more often than not, and <em>yes</em>, <em>sure</em>, Arcee did the same more often than <em>anyone</em> cared to count. But Arcee had been plunging recklessly into battle well before Hot Rod’s spark had merged with her armor. Arcee had exit strategies, even if those strategies mostly amounted to ‘don’t die’. Hot Rod’s strategizing was limited to readying her blaster and rolling in.</p><p>Arcee could spot the difference.</p><p>She’d avoided Hot Rod on principle. No use getting attached if the kid was gonna get herself slagged or sent away. </p><p>And then the survivors from that class of recruits had been with them for a quartex, then two, then three, and Hot Rod was not only still with the team but leagues ahead of the other rookies. </p><p>They’d shared a table at the mess a few times, Hot Rod chattering away about something or other while Arcee hummed or grunted or shrugged at the appropriate times. Every so often the algorithm for the guard rota would put her on shift with Hot Rod, which undoubtedly meant she was in for something other than a few joors of quiet contemplation. There were worse things. Sometimes on peaceful night shifts Hot Rod would challenge her to a sharpshooting competition, and that was fine. It was always a pleasure to one-up a rookie, even better to blow off charge by picking off turborats and shattering a window or two. Hot Rod always took the loss better than expected, ducking her head and laughing even as she handed over a stack of cred chips that were hardly worth what the metal in their circuits could net. Her field had a weird thrum to it sometimes, but Arcee didn’t ask. It wasn’t a bad feeling--Hot Rod’s field didn’t grate on Arcee the way some other mechs’ did. </p><p>And lately, every time Arcee turned around, Hot Rod was nearby. She’d go to the range and empty her gun into the holotargets and, once the warm glow of shooting had faded, she’d realize that Hot Rod had been milling around the range for Primus knew how long, hanging out with whoever else was there but eventually sidling over to try and chat. </p><p>“Any pointers?” Hot Rod might ask, or “That was some beautiful shooting.” </p><p>Like she hadn’t seen Arcee drop an airborne ‘Con from two megamiles last decaorn. </p><p>Or, a couple orn ago, Arcee had been lying on the couch in the base rec room with her legs up, watching from a distance as Springer demolished a series of their brand-new recruits in an arm-wrestling tournament, when Hot Rod wandered up and asked if she wanted to play a game of Fullstasis.</p><p>“Strategy games aren’t really my thing,” she’d said, when a blank stare hadn’t gotten the message across. </p><p>“Well, okay,” Hot Rod had said then. “You wanna hustle the rest of the gearshifts over there instead?”</p><p>“Much better.”</p><p>Hot Rod had beamed and leaned in close, gesturing with her forgotten Fullstasis board to one of the tournament losers. “I hear Knockback’s got a little stash of high grade in his subspace.”</p><p>And it had been a thing of beauty to watch Hot Rod set the whole thing up. It was even better to get to bring it all down. Knockback was okay as far as the rookies went. Cracking his gauntlet armor on the tabletop and conning him out of the only engex for megamiles probably didn’t endear them to him, but drinking high grade on the roof with Hot Rod was worth it. Hot Rod’s field had washed over her as they lay there, overcharged, staring at the wobbling stars, and she’d just let it tangle with her own. She’d slipped into recharge for a bit and woken later to Hot Rod’s helm resting against her own. </p><p>Whether she’d lain there for a few extra kliks before engaging her FIM chip and heading back to her bunk was for her to know. Hot Rod hadn’t woken up when she’d left, but the easy way she’d been greeted the next day in the mess said there were no hard feelings. And normally--normally mechs had hard feelings about things like that. Arcee knew there were a few mechs on the team holding grudges against her for less. </p><p>It was strange. All of it. </p><p>And yet, Arcee got used to it. Came to expect it. If she was refuelling, odds were good that Hot Rod would end up joining her if she happened to be off shift. Springer aside, having a semi-regular sparring partner meant she could try out some of the more intensive moves she’d been workshopping. She could expect someone to have her back if tension on the team ever hit critical mass.</p><p>It got a little weirder after Hot Rod’s reclassification.</p><p>Not only was Arcee spending half her refuelling breaks swapping stories with Hot Rod, most of her free time was now taken up by socializing. And not just with Hot Rod. That part was normal, or, at least, her new normal.</p><p>Hot Rod had a <em>thing</em> about people where she actually seemed to like them. Liked talking to them, and spending time with them, and actively sought them out. </p><p>Like: Suddenly there would be a full, sparkling pink cube of energon next to her half-empty dinner. “Managed to snag a couple extra rations before the spares went,” Hot Rod would explain as she slid into the seat across from Arcee, bringing two or three other mechs along, and the mess table would become a riot: four conversations happening over each other, all of them slowly ratcheting up in volume until somebody said something outrageous enough that they all managed to start having the same deafening argument. Somewhere along the line, Hot Rod would catch Arcee’s eye and smile and snap something witty along the comm lines, and the disaster would go from unbearable to, somehow, the amusing side of tolerable.</p><p>Or: “Want in on an easy score?” Hot Rod would ask. “Magnus is on site, and the pool’s betting on how fast he’s gonna notice that Springer swapped his inventory datapad with the entire first season of <em>As the Kitchen Sinks</em>.” </p><p>Or: “Getting some folks together for a game of Praxus fold ‘em,” Hot Rod would say, flashing her a quick spread of cards. “Buy-in’s fifty creds or as much engex as you can spare. Gotta be more than a half-cube, though. Twin Twist’s still barred for putting up a mechamilliliter.”</p><p>The worst part was that Arcee would say <em>yes</em>, almost every time, without even a token attempt at refusing. The past decaorn had seen her spending more of her down time with the team than the rest of her military career combined. </p><p>It was fine as long as she didn’t think about it. As soon as she <em>did</em> think about it, a stubborn itch materialized under her plating. There was a part of her processor that was slowly changing the shape of the space that Hot Rod took up in her databanks and active thoughts, and Arcee hadn’t given it permission to do so. </p>
<hr/><p>“We’re friends, right?”</p><p>Arcee paused with her rifle halfway to her shoulder. There was still time before the flanking team broke through. She lowered the stock to the ground. </p><p>Hot Rod was very studiously loading her blaster. </p><p>Knocking the question around for a moment, she realized that the answer was probably yes. What else could all of this add up to? The extra rations, the compliments, the constant invitations. Even the overcharged stargazing. Friends did things for each other like that.</p><p>When Hot Rod glanced up, Arcee nodded.</p><p>Hot Rod nodded back. “Okay.”</p><p>Arcee waited until her patience ran out. “Is that all?”</p><p>“No, I. Um.” Hot Rod fixed her gaze on her blaster again, rubbing at an invisible spot of something and fiddling with the internals. “Well--”</p><p>Something hitched in Arcee’s spark. Nothing popped up on her HUD. Her frame was still intact when she laid a hand over her Autobrand. She dropped her hand as soon as she realized what she was doing. Fidgeting was a sign of weakness. She felt the strange urge to unload and reload her own firearm, even though she knew it was ready, and a wave of frustration washed over her. It was a simple mission. She wasn’t in danger. </p><p>“Never mind,” Hot Rod said. “It wasn’t important.”</p><p>Arcee frowned. Hot Rod never acted like this. Hot Rod didn't <em>do </em>self-conscious like this.</p><p>She laid the barrel of her rifle on the railing again, peering down the sights even as her processor chewed away at figuring out the strange tightness of her spark. </p><p>Still no ‘Cons below, and nobody to cover. She could feel Hot Rod radiating stress in uneven blips. Field scrambler must be on the fritz, she guessed. Every time she felt it peak, another little tremor disturbed the rhythm of her sparkbeat.</p><p>She had the thought as the flank team finally came into view that it almost seemed like Hot Rod’s discomfort had made <em>her</em> feel bad.</p><p>Huh. </p>
<hr/><p>“So,” Springer said as they circled each other. He stepped back to dodge her hook and came back around with a kick to her chassis.</p><p>Arcee blocked it with her knee, shuffling neatly out of range. “So?”</p><p>“How’s Hot Rod been?”</p><p>“You see her every day,” Arcee said with a grunt, ducking to avoid a sweeping fist. “Ask her yourself.”</p><p>Springer whistled. “Trouble in paradise already?”</p><p>“Last I checked, we were in Ibex.” She managed to jam the heel of her foot under his vents and knocked him back. “It’s hardly Cyberutopia.”</p><p>“C’mon, Arcee,” Springer sighed. He settled into an easy stance before he pulled two batons out of his subspace and tossed one to her. “Not that I don’t enjoy your normal sparkling personality, but I didn’t think the ‘facing would be so bad that it’d make you <em>less</em> fun.”</p><p>Arcee rushed him, her spark hot with a flash of anger that she didn’t understand. He blocked her swipe to the face with his own baton and they locked together at the grip.  </p><p>“<em>What</em> ‘facing?” she snapped. Her frame was dumping heat from the exertion as the lock refused to break, one strut in her arm threatening to yield for her. </p><p>This close, she didn’t have to try to read the surprise on Springer’s face. It made it easier to shift her weight to one foot and use the other to bring him down at the knee. </p><p>Arcee broke the stalemate and flicked her baton back around to Springer’s neck. She stopped before it made contact. Her arm had stopped trembling. </p><p>“Hold on,” Springer said. His optics were still wide. </p><p>“No pausing in a spar,” Arcee said. “We’re done. I won.”</p><p>“Wait, what? I mean <em>yes</em>, you won, but…” He knocked the baton away from his neck but didn’t stand up. “Are you and Hot Rod really not ‘facing?”</p><p>Arcee’s hand tightened on the baton grip. Her frame felt too small again, her spark burning. </p><p>“No,” she said. </p><p>“Oh, frag,” Springer sighed. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>“Why are you sorry?”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to… I mean, it seems like a sore subject,” he said, gesturing at her death grip on the baton. “I just thought you were because, you know, I haven’t seen you spend that much time with anybody. Ever.”</p><p>“And?”</p><p>Springer shrugged, helpless. Arcee had the awful feeling of being pitied by someone on their knees. “I figured that had to mean something. You spend time with me, sometimes, but that’s <em>here</em>, when we’re sparring, or on missions. We don’t hang out together, just the two of us.”</p><p>“Okay,” she said, but Springer wasn’t done. </p><p>“And, I mean, with the way Hot Rod acts around you I figured you guys had to be… involved.”</p><p>Her processor, still winding down from the fight, snagged on that. “What?”</p><p>“I thought you were fragging,” Springer said.</p><p>“I got that part,” Arcee sighed, her anger dissolving into a familiar frustration. She dropped the baton and settled her hands on her hips. “I meant Hot Rod. What do you mean, ‘with the way she acts around me’?”</p><p>They stared at each other. </p><p>“Oh no,” Springer said finally. “You really don’t know.”</p><p>“Know <em>what</em>?”</p><p>“Arcee,” he said, “The kid’s got it bad.”</p><p>She waited. </p><p>“You know she rigs the guard shifts sometimes, right?”</p><p>Arcee shook her head.</p><p>“The extra rations?”</p><p>“It’s not unheard of.”</p><p>“Primus, Arcee, the time Ultra Magnus gave us a lift back to base and Hot Rod fell into recharge with her head on your shoulder?”</p><p>“She held the line for half a joor, <em>alone</em>,” Arcee snapped. She flicked the tab on a subspace hatch on her chassis back and forth. Her spark pulsed hard. “She was <em>tired</em>.”</p><p>“You don’t see me and Kup cuddling up after a hard day,” Springer snapped back, finally rising to his feet. </p><p>She met his gaze even as she fought the urge to leave. She didn’t want to think about what her face was doing that made his expression soften.</p><p>“I’m not trying to fight with you,” Springer said. “I just--I don’t want her getting hurt. The way she talks about you, it’s… it’s pretty clear she thinks you hung the moon.”</p><p>Arcee’s spark twisted again. “Luna I or Luna II?”</p><p>Springer barked an unhappy laugh. “Both of them.”</p>
<hr/><p>Hot Rod found her a decaorn later, patching her wounds after the team returned with a neat haul of energon. Anyone could hear the ruckus clear across the base as the rec room filled with mechs celebrating the casualty-free win. </p><p>The surplus wouldn’t last. They all knew it, but for the moment it was nice to pretend. Arcee had passed on the party, instead finding an empty meeting room and settling on the floor with her cobbled-together medkit. </p><p>She’d just cracked her armor open to get a good look at whatever was leaking in there when someone stepped in through the half-open door.</p><p>“Holding up?” Hot Rod asked.</p><p>They’d both taken a few hits this time around, Arcee more than Hot Rod. Either the Decepticons had finally gotten wise to where the snipers were in Kup’s three rotating battle plans or there’d been a turn in her luck. </p><p>For now, she refused to think about it. </p><p>“You should see the other mechs,” she said. </p><p>Hot Rod grinned. “I did. One of ‘em looked like an old berth sheet when you were done with him.”</p><p>Arcee ripped a packet of sealant open with her dentae and craned her neck around to try and find a clear shot to the leak. It was tricky to only get the busted lines without slipping and gumming up the joint. Normally she had a steadier hand, but she also normally didn’t have an audience, let alone an audience that apparently looked at her in some revealing way.</p><p>Hot Rod took the packet from her hands before she could thoroughly frag her internals. Arcee didn’t fight it, but her frame tensed automatically, braced for another clumsy repair. She’d long since stopped accepting help from non-medics.</p><p>“Not that I don’t respect doing your own repairs, but normally it’s easier to fix things when you can see them.” Hot Rod knelt next to her and leaned in, tilting her helm to try and spot the leak.</p><p>Arcee grunted. She was waiting for Hot Rod to shove her hand into her chassis. Hot Rod would probably get sealant everywhere anyway--it would’ve been better to just do it herself. She should’ve said no. She opened her mouth to tell Hot Rod to forget it, but another strange swell of sparkache stopped her for long enough that Hot Rod’s hand met her plating. </p><p>Hot Rod eased the gap in Arcee’s armor as wide as it would go, pinning it with her fingers while her other hand slipped between two struts to coat the split line. It happened so quickly that Arcee’s processor took a nanoklik to catch up with the cool relief that spread from the patched line outward. Her system stopped pinging her with leakage alerts at the same moment her sensors finally reported on how it felt to have Hot Rod’s hands poking at her internals. </p><p>It was… not bad. There was a warmth around the patch site, all the struts and cables of her shoulder registering the gentle touch. She frowned, and the touch disappeared. </p><p>“Slag, sorry.” Hot Rod held her hands up. </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I hurt you.” </p><p>Arcee considered that. “You didn’t hurt me.”</p><p>“Oh.” Hot Rod’s hands dropped to her lap. She was still holding the sealant. </p><p>“Be careful with that,” Arcee said, picking the packet up by a clean corner and dropping it to the side. “It’ll jam your joints.”</p><p>“Oh,” Hot Rod said again. Her optics kept drifting back to the open armor panel on Arcee’s chassis. </p><p>Arcee snapped it shut with one last check of the sealed line. Hot Rod sat back on her heels and shifted her weight around. She always disengaged her field scrambler as soon as they were back on base, and even though Arcee could tell she was reining it in, it was easy to read the resurfacing discomfort. Layered beneath it was the hum. It wasn’t her business to tell Hot Rod to see a medic, but sometimes she thought it might be an arrhythmic sparkbeat.</p><p>She studied Hot Rod’s face. Maybe it <em>was</em> her business--they hadn’t talked much in the past few orn. Seeing Hot Rod made Arcee think about Springer’s face when she’d dropped him, and thinking about that distracted her to the point that she missed the punchlines of Hot Rod’s stories. Something squeezed her spark tight at the stress in Hot Rod’s field. </p><p>Arcee vented a slow stream of air and leaned back against the base of a chair. “Get on with it before you glitch yourself out.”</p><p>Hot Rod froze mid-squirm. “What?”</p><p>“Something’s got your axels in a twist.” Arcee pulled one leg up by the knee joint and started to pick shrapnel out of her armor. “Been bothering you for a while.”</p><p>“Oh, that,” Hot Rod said.  “I just… wanted to know what you thought about the new mission plan.”</p><p>Arcee squinted at a nasty barb of metal. She took her time easing it out of the dent it’d put in her armor before she leveled Hot Rod with a stare. </p><p>Hot Rod stared back. Her composure held until it very visibly did not, her shoulders slumping as she rolled her optics toward a dark corner of the room. “Okay, okay, fine. Stop me if this is stupid, but I was talking to a friend before I shipped out and… should I be changing my frame?” </p><p>Arcee dropped her gaze. She didn’t trust herself enough to be looking at Hot Rod while she parsed that kind of question. She barely trusted herself not to bolt. That would bring the tenuous calm they’d crafted crashing to the ground. Arcee traced the edge of a pock in her armor and reminded herself that they'd been on the move for quartices now. Half the public datanet went down long before that, and they had minimal communication with the rest of the faction for the sake of security. Hot Rod didn’t have anyone else to ask.</p><p><em>I don’t want her getting hurt</em>. </p><p>And Hot Rod, thanks to some malfunction in her self-preservation circuitry, trusted her.</p><p>“Do you want to change your frame?” Arcee asked.</p><p>Surprise spiked through Hot Rod’s field, overtaking the twisting mess. </p><p>“Uh… maybe?”</p><p>“Do you like your frame?”</p><p>When she lifted her helm again, Hot Rod looked like she was trying not to frown. Not mad, not upset, but frowning the same way she did when losing strategy games. </p><p>“It’s my frame,” Hot Rod said. “It just <em>is</em>.”</p><p>Arcee went back to picking shrapnel. Hot Rod’s field darkened and grew choppy with every piece of metal she tugged free, and this was exactly why it was hard to talk to Hot Rod now. Now it mattered how quickly she responded. The longer she sat silent, the higher Hot Rod’s stress would mount, and the more she herself would develop a stubborn crawling discomfort under her plating. Because it felt like she was responsible for all of it. </p><p>“If you like your frame,” Arcee said finally, and then stopped. The <em>way</em> she said these things mattered, too. It wasn't like she'd had any practice. Nobody ever asked these things outright. She pressed on. “If you’re comfortable with your frame the way it is, you don’t have to change anything.”</p><p>“Huh.” Hot Rod shifted off her knees at last. She ended up leaning against the same chair, her shoulder knocking carelessly against Arcee’s and then staying there. “...Did you?”</p><p>Arcee frowned down at her leg. She’d run out of shrapnel to pick. </p><p>“I don’t want to talk about that,” she said. The answer popped out before she had really considered it. “Maybe another time.”</p><p>“Okay,” Hot Rod said, easy as anything. </p><p>Arcee let her helm roll back against the chair.</p><p><em>Okay</em>, Hot Rod had said. Her field had smoothed out. Maybe it <em>was</em> easy for her to talk to Arcee.</p><p>Arcee envied her if that was the case.</p><p>The calm of Hot Rod’s field was still far more active than her own, but she let it wash over her. It teased at her own, pulling without intent until the two fields mixed. She felt the thrum again, stronger than before, draw her in until her spark settled into the same beat. </p><p>Her optics shuttered. Just for a moment, she thought. Hot Rod’s frame was warm where they touched. Her self-repair was working hard on the damage she’d taken. There was a low fuel warning pinging at the corner of her HUD. Nothing to worry about just yet. </p><p>“You wanna go to the party?” Hot Rod asked quietly. The vibrations from her vocalizer traveled through her armor to Arcee’s. </p><p>If she focused she could feel her finer components humming. </p><p>“In a few kliks,” she said. “I can hear it well enough from here.”</p><p>She <em>could</em> hear the party, sort of. Mostly it was just the music, alternating between pre-schism shard pop and some of the lighter stuff that had come from the revolutionaries. Everyone had silently agreed to pretend that that kind of music hadn’t come from mechs who later became Decepticons. She tried not to hold it against them. </p><p>Above the faint noise, what Arcee heard was the quiet. That in and of itself was strange: Hot Rod, not talking. It occurred to her that maybe Hot Rod was holding back for her sake. Another line on the growing list of things that made Arcee think that Springer maybe had a point. It was sweet but unlikely, even if Hot Rod did somehow feel comfortably enough to sit so close to her. They were almost helm to helm.</p><p>Abruptly, she realized the other reason it was so quiet. There was no proximity alert pinging her HUD. A crack of genuine fear hit her before she focused back in on the calm and dug into her systems. It wasn’t the fuel loss. She’d personally tied her early warning system to her core processes so that they wouldn’t go offline until she did. She reset the whole system in a nanoklik. It gave her the all clear again.</p><p>Something had happened. </p><p>When she opened her optics, Hot Rod was doing a bad job pretending that she hadn’t been staring. Arcee's spark flared.  </p><p>“Go join the others,” she said. It came out sounding just as exhausted as she felt. “I’m going back to my bunk.”</p><p>“Oh. Okay,” Hot Rod said, gaze dropping to the floor.  “You sure?”</p><p>“I need to refuel and recharge. Self-repair’s taking its sweet time.”</p><p>She stood first, joints aching, and held out a hand to pull Hot Rod to her feet. Even Hot Rod’s hands were warm, she thought, and deleted that data immediately. </p><p>Hot Rod lingered as she cleaned up her medkit, but after a klik Arcee heard her weight shift as she turned to leave. </p><p>“Don’t pass out on your way to your bunk.”</p><p>“Hot Rod,” Arcee said, gingerly wrapping the packet of sealant in a swath of stained mesh. </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>She kept her eyes on the ground. “Thank you.”</p><p>Hot Rod was silent. </p><p>“For sealing my lines,” Arcee continued. She expected another flippant line--it would’ve helped put her processor back in line, maybe, to hear Hot Rod sound like herself. </p><p>“Of course,” Hot Rod said, and, terribly: “You can ask people for help, too.”</p><p>Arcee snapped the lid of the medkit shut and stayed on one knee, venting one hard gust of air through her frame. She didn’t want to know how Hot Rod was looking at her now. </p><p>“I’ll try and keep that in mind.”</p><p>As soon as Arcee was back in her bunk with two full rations in her tank, she pulled up her personnel files. They were sparse--she tended to delete offlined mechs’ entries if she hadn’t known them for long. It didn’t take long to find the problem.</p><p>The room was empty. There was nobody to see her aim a furious kick at the bunk above hers. She offlined her vocalizer and yelled the longest string of curses she could think of. In a fit of petulance she nearly deleted the entirety of her personal data, carving around the folders dedicated to ‘holding a blaster’ and ‘shooting’. The command waited for execution.</p><p>She stopped.</p><p>And took a moment to press the heels of her hands into her optics until they glitched. The command timed out. </p><p>Her processor had tagged Hot Rod as &lt;safe&gt;.</p><p>Not as &lt;Autobot&gt; or &lt;ally&gt; or &lt;low threat level&gt; or &lt;non-threat&gt;.</p><p>For the first time in several vorn, someone had been tagged <em>safe</em>. </p><p>Primus knew how long Hot Rod’s file had been like that. Probably since the night on the roof, Arcee thought, her frame tensing. It had been at least that long. She’d let herself recharge next to Hot Rod, engex or no engex, and she’d just been walking around acting like that hadn’t meant anything. Like it hadn’t changed something in the most acute way possible. </p><p>A mean little line of coding provided the thought that hey, Hot Rod probably knew. Probably wanted something from her, or, even worse, simply wanted <em>her</em>. </p><p>Hot Rod was still young. She’d seen things just as horrible as Arcee had, only far less of them. She probably hadn’t learned that anything hopeful and uncomplicated would invariably end up strapped to a conveyer belt, condemned to the closest smelting pool. </p><p>Arcee kicked the top bunk again, hard enough that something in her foot snapped. </p><p>Her vocalizer refused to translate the crackling growl in her spark. </p><p>There was no place here for something soft.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>what continuity is this? good question!</p><p>why did this get written? because harper and james and i had an in-depth conversation on the incredible lesbian potential of arcee/hot rod. this was originally intended to be a fun and sexy romp but sometimes, the best laid plans go awry</p><p>why's arcee like this? because i love her IDW characterization of being just a little bit ruthless, mystified by softer emotions and difficult to befriend. also: projection.</p><p>why is this suddenly a chapter fic? because, as always, i let myself get carried away!</p><p>title from yucky duster's 'elementary school dropout'</p></blockquote></div></div>
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